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As part of a dreary 13-3 Blue Jays loss to the Red Sox in Game 1 of what had been labeled the club’s biggest series of the year, Marco Estrada may not have deserved a better fate, but, somehow, he deserved better.

Estrada, the Jays’ all-star starter, threw 38 balls among his 77 pitches at Rogers Centre — which is why he didn’t deserve to win — but he also had little to no help from his defence, an element of the game that this team needs in order to win.

“Defence is something that every single day you’re expected to bring,” said second baseman Devon Travis, guilty of one physical error and others that were mental. “Offence it’s a tough game, there’s ups and downs. Not on defence. You’ve got to bring it every day and I think we saw it today how quickly it can unravel.”

But it wasn’t just Estrada who suffered from the generally shoddy glove-work behind him. By the fifth inning, the sellout crowd was jeering loudly and cheering sarcastically whenever left fielder Melvin Upton Jr. made a routine glove play, one without dropping or mishandling it.

But horrible Jays defence was contagious: In the first inning, with Dustin Pedroia on first and two out, Mookie Betts sliced a drive to right centre. The ball bounced in front of a racing Michael Saunders and then spun past him, allowing the runner to score.

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In the second inning, after a walk and a one-out wild pitch, Pedroia lashed a one-hopper almost directly at Travis, who was shaded up the middle. But he had cheated with one anticipatory step to his left and the ball shot by him into centre field. Kevin Pillar threw home and the ball bounced over catcher Dioner Navarro as Jackie Bradley, Jr. scored. Estrada failed to back up the play at home, but a good bounce back to Navarro allowed the catcher to throw Pedroia out at third.

“We’re waking up and we’re playing baseball again tomorrow,” Travis said. “It’s a crazy game. It’s the hardest game in the world. It’s so humbling. The beauty is you get to wake up the next day and get after it again.”

In the third inning, Upton raced into left-centre and reached full-length, but Betts’ liner bounced off the end of his glove for a hit. Then Hanley Ramirez lofted a high fly onto the right field line that Edwin Encarnacion could not catch up with and Saunders had no chance for. With runners on the corners, Travis Shaw flew to short left. Upton positioned himself for the catch-and- throw, but dropped it. A strong throw might have held Betts at third.

In the fourth, Brock Holt lashed a double down the third baseline. Upton wanted to challenge the runner at second, but he reached down with his glove, turned his body and came up without the ball. That’s when the fans started to give it to him. Immediately after that, a Danny Barnes’ pitch bounced off Navarro’s glove for a passed ball sending Holt to third from where he scored on a sacrifice fly.

The beat-down just kept on coming for the Jays. In the seventh inning, with David Ortiz on second base with a double, Betts grounded to Travis who snuck a peak at Ortiz trundling to third. He had made a play like that in Cleveland, but this time when he took his eye off the ball, it clanked off his glove for an error. Hanley then hit a three-run homer. The Jays had only made two errors. It felt like more.

“I run through games, probably for too long, in my head,” Travis admitted. “I need to do a better job of being able to throw it out and put my head on that pillow and get some sleep, ’cause we got a game at one o’clock. It’s just something that comes with time. Just continuing to trust the process. It’s a game of up and downs. You just have to try and find yourself in the middle.”

And in the eighth inning, Navarro collected his second passed ball of the night, which was followed by a walk issued by Ryan Tepera and then a new pitcher, lefty Matt Dermody, who joined in on the defensive fun. Shaw grounded to Encarnacion who threw to second. The return throw by Troy Tulowitzki, that would have completed the double-play, was dropped by Dermody. The Sox failed to score.

Jays fans, many of whom had left the building by the time this one was over, saw Sox right-hander Rick Porcello run his record to 20-3, the majors’ first 20-game winner, and saw Big Papi open his final regular-season series in Toronto, with two hits, and later pinch-ran for by manager John Farrell following an eighth-inning single.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Jays rotation has combined for a 0-4 record and a 7.27 ERA over its last six starts, averaging 4 1/3 innings per outing. The Jays now trail the Red Sox by two games in the AL East.

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